Report: Trump Actually Draining the Swamp, Preparing Huge Cuts

President-elect Donald Trump Vice President Dinner, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, USA - 18 Jan 2017 (Rex Features via AP Images)

It’s almost too good to be true.

According to a new report in The Hill, Trump “is ready to take an ax to government spending” — and the changes proposed by his transition team are said to be “dramatic.”

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How dramatic? How about getting rid of entire departments dramatic:

The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities would be eliminated entirely.

Overall, the blueprint being used by Trump’s team would reduce federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 10 years.

The proposed cuts hew closely to a blueprint published last year by the conservative Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has helped staff the Trump transition.

Trump promised to drain the swamp, and he apparently means to follow through. What’s more, he has the full support of Republicans who have supported similar proposals in the past:

Many of the specific cuts were included in the 2017 budget adopted by the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), a caucus that represents a majority of House Republicans. The RSC budget plan would reduce federal spending by $8.6 trillion over the next decade.

Two members of Trump’s transition team are discussing the cuts at the White House budget office: Russ Vought, a former aide to Vice President-elect Mike Pence and the former executive director of the RSC, and John Gray, who previously worked for Pence, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) when Ryan headed the House Budget Committee.

Vought and Gray, who both worked for the Heritage Foundation, are laying the groundwork for the so-called skinny budget — a 175- to 200-page document that will spell out the main priorities of the incoming Trump administration, along with summary tables. That document is expected to come out within 45 days of Trump taking office.

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Some conservatives, after decades of being disappointed by Republicans, can’t believe this is actually happening.

“As with everything else in the world of Washington, I’ll hold off on popping the champagne cork until I actually see it done,” writes Jazz Shaw at Hot Air:

… but this is the level of cutting which might eventually return us to a point beyond a balanced budget and (dare we say it … ) reducing the national debt. And if it does somehow come true, I’ll have to ask the same question I’ve been posing time and time again over the past couple of months, particularly with companies bringing jobs and investments back to American soil.

Was it really this easy all this time but nobody bothered to try?

I’ve wondered the same thing for years.

Ace of Spades HQ writes:

I’ll believe it when I see it, but Trump has surprised many of us before.

The biggest surprise for most of us came on Election Night 2016, when Trump went from being an almost sure loser at the beginning of the night (and we were bracing for President-elect Hillary), to “he may have a chance if he wins Florida,” to — “holy crap he just won North Carolina honey, he just won North Carolina!!!”, to “OH MY GOD Michigan and Wisconsin,” to President-elect Trump at the end of the night.

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It was a beautiful and magical thing to watch, and you can experience it all over again at AoSHQ tonight where Ace is re-posting election-night coverage and setting up threads as if it were November 8 all over again.

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